Friday, July 20, 2018

"Trump is not Putin's puppet and here's why" (Dobrokhotov). The European market for gas. "“I think the European Union is a foe,” Trump says on eve of Putin summit" (Stewart):

"“Well, I think we have a lot of foes,” Trump said when asked by CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor about who he thinks America’s biggest foe is, globally, right now. “I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us is in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is a foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive.”"

When Trump says 'foe' he means commercial competitor, and he regards the job of the US President as working for the top American CEOs to improve their business prospects against foreigners. He didn't really get anywhere with respect to Russian gas and Nord Stream 2 due to two problems. First, his 'donors' want to keep NATO as a Zionist army but his central bankers are telling him he needs to start to cut military spending, with one way to do that to get Europe to chip in more for NATO, but coming on too strong on the NATO arm-twisting left him with no chips left to play on gas. Secondly, European plans are too far along and too connected to Russia to do a 180 now. A US gas play needed to start at least five to ten years ago, during the time Barry was swanning around spending all of his time as President basking in the glow of being Barry, with no time to worry about gas (to be fair, the fracking gas surpluses didn't exist a few years ago, but Barry's experts should have told him it was coming and he had to find a big place to lay off a lot of it).

The bottom line is that Trump isn't acting like Putin's puppet on the most important issue at hand, and if Putin has anything on Trump, it isn't working.

"Republican Senators Introduce Bill to Snuff out Europe’s Independence" (Gorka). It is fairly fucking outrageous - and a convincing indictment of the current American policy of conducting warfare by sanctions - to sanction somebody for not buying your inferior product!

"You've Heard the Hysteria About the Trump-Putin Summit. Now Consider the Facts." (Sirohi).

One way to understand US politics is that the 'donor' model works better for Republicans than Democrats, as it does not reveal massive contradictions in the Republican set of policy positions. The McCarthyism of current Democrats is simply amazing (the phony outrage over McFaul reminds me of even earlier American history - 'Remember the Maine').

"Trump is not Putin's puppet and here's why" (Dobrokhotov). The European market for gas. "“I think the European Union is a foe,” Trump says on eve of Putin summit" (Stewart):

"“Well, I think we have a lot of foes,” Trump said when asked by CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor about who he thinks America’s biggest foe is, globally, right now. “I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us is in trade. Now, you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe. Russia is a foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive.”"

When Trump says 'foe' he means commercial competitor, and he regards the job of the US President as working for the top American CEOs to improve their business prospects against foreigners. He didn't really get anywhere with respect to Russian gas and Nord Stream 2 due to two problems. First, his 'donors' want to keep NATO as a Zionist army but his central bankers are telling him he needs to start to cut military spending, with one way to do that to get Europe to chip in more for NATO, but coming on too strong on the NATO arm-twisting left him with no chips left to play on gas. Secondly, European plans are too far along and too connected to Russia to do a 180 now. A US gas play needed to start at least five to ten years ago, during the time Barry was swanning around spending all of his time as President basking in the glow of being Barry, with no time to worry about gas (to be fair, the fracking gas surpluses didn't exist a few years ago, but Barry's experts should have told him it was coming and he had to find a big place to lay off a lot of it).

The bottom line is that Trump isn't acting like Putin's puppet on the most important issue at hand, and if Putin has anything on Trump, it isn't working.

"Republican Senators Introduce Bill to Snuff out Europe’s Independence" (Gorka). It is fairly fucking outrageous - and a convincing indictment of the current American policy of conducting warfare by sanctions - to sanction somebody for not buying your inferior product!

"You've Heard the Hysteria About the Trump-Putin Summit. Now Consider the Facts." (Sirohi).

One way to understand US politics is that the 'donor' model works better for Republicans than Democrats, as it does not reveal massive contradictions in the Republican set of policy positions. The McCarthyism of current Democrats is simply amazing (the phony outrage over McFaul reminds me of even earlier American history - 'Remember the Maine').